Olivo Barbieri

Lugo e il mare

Olivo Barbieri has been flying over and photographing the cities and regions of Europe, Asia and North America since 2003, at a height of 300-500 feet. His view camera and focusing – or unfocusing – procedures describe the urban landscape like a huge single model, while recounting the contemporary world as though it were a project yet to be created, or a fantastic reconstruction of something that no longer exists.
This process of miniaturisation of the world abolishes the usual relationships of scale and traditional viewpoints and allows us to achieve a better understanding of the original layout of each city, metropolis or region.
The photographs featured in this book were taken in the Italian region of Romagna during 2005, commencing with the town of Lugo, with which Barbieri has a special relationship. This particular image is a night view of Piazza Baracca, taken in 1982, and constitutes one of the artist’s first important photographs, featured in the “Viaggio in Italia” project devised by Luigi Ghirri.

Olivo Barbieri was born in 1954 in Carpi (Modena), Italy. After 1971 his interest in photography grew, initially concentrating his research on artificial illumination in European and Oriental cities. From 1989 onwards, he began to travel frequently to the Far East, particularly to China, of which he is attracted by the rapid transformation. In 1993, 1995 and 1997 he took part in the Venice Biennale. In the mid- 90s, he adopted a new photographic technique, allowing him to maintain his focus on only certain points of the image: the landscapes photographed, often from aboard a helicopter, thus come across as a series of scale models providing surprising and estranging visions.
After several exhibitions in Italy and abroad, in 2003 he embarked on the site specific project, which involved a number of cities all around the world. In 2004 he was invited by the Rome Commission to portray the city and realized site speific_ROMA 04. He made several films as part of the site specific_ series. Barbieri’s work is included in museums, in public and private art collections in Europe and in the US. His films have been screened at the most important film festivals and museums and they have won international prizes and awards.